Glacial JB Holmes protected by golf's slow play omerta and meaningless punishments

Brooks Koepka could hardly claim he had not been warned. JB Holmes, his final-round partner at Royal Portrush, has acquired such notoriety for slow play that at his last tournament win in Los Angeles in February, he spent 80 seconds stalking a single putt, as if conducting a cartographic survey. On the 12^th green, a tortured Koepka glowered at an official, mockingly tapping his wrist in a plea for Holmes to be given the hurry-up. Either his patience had evaporated in the dire weather, or he had simply decided that life was too short.

The crowning absurdity was that Holmes shot 87 on Sunday. Previously, the Kentuckian had sought to justify his glacial pace by arguing that players of his standard were competing for too much money and too many FedEx points to be bothered by such fripperies as the passage of time. On this occasion, though, he was compiling a round so dreadful that he began the day with only two players ahead of him on the leaderboard and ended it with just three behind. Where most would have been desperate to escape on the next flight out of Belfast, Holmes chose to subject his torment on everyone else around him.